Tennessee Vols athletics has been terrible under Barack Obama. Here is a look how the Volunteers did under other presidents dating back to the 1920s.
Since we seem to be in the habit of blaming and giving credit to the president for everything, why not take it to sports?
After all, we attribute gas prices, the stock market, and overseas safety to the president by making some indirect connection to a law they may have signed years before.
Perhaps there’s some random education law the president passes that affects a team in recruiting and in turn affects how they perform on the field.
To be fair, we can give direct credit to Teddy Roosevelt for saving college football at the turn of the century, which became the catalyst for all college athletics.
Tennessee Vols athletics goes back to the turn of the century with baseball and football and to the second decade of the 20th century of men’s basketball.
In fact, we can trace presidents back to Benjamin Harrison that have presided over a country in which a Tennessee athletic program existed. After all, Tennessee football predates the World Series by 14 years.
But under which president has the athletic program performed the best? The Vols have been a national brand dating back to the days of FDR and have been in existence under 22 presidents.
However, since they did not become a national brand under FDR, as we rank the presidents they performed best under, we have to separate them before and after that point. After all, the SEC was created in 1933, Roosevelt’s first year in office.
That leaves nine presidents before him that have to be analyzed. Here is a ranking of how Tennessee athletics fared under the last 22 presidents, with the nine before FDR being ranked on the first page.
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